We lit Roman candles off the back of the golf cart as Cecily sped across the field, the fireworks shooting fifty feet in the air and exploding against the black sky in brilliant glittering bursts of color.
Daisy screamed as a tight turn flung our bodies.
“Hold on, ladies!” Cecily shouted as she angled the cart down a steep hill.
A rush of cold air swept my face as we shot down the hill. Everyinch of my skin tingled. This was it, I had made it. I was a part of their inner circle. I was friends with the most beautiful, successful, and envied girls on campus.
Out of the darkness, we heard sirens and the campus police loudspeaker.“Public Safety. Stop what you’re doing immediately.”
“Go go go!” Daisy said, hitting the back of Cecily’s seat.
Adrenaline shot through my veins as we raced across the field, Cecily swerving the golf cart like a NASCAR driver through the university. As soon as we’d lost the campus cops, we let out a collective exhale.
“Who taught you to drive?” I asked, dizzy.
Cecily smirked. “I learned how to drive in Manhattan.”
“Did you see them trying to run after us?” Kai asked as Daisy clutched her stomach in a fit of laughter.
As we threaded through the main campus, Kai turned up the music. Daisy and I stood, hanging off the cart and singing to the music as loud as our lungs would allow. Students leaned out of their second- and third-story windows and cheered us on.
“Y’all are insane!” a girl shouted from a window. From another, a group of guys cheered, holding up the Sterling Club flag.
Not only was I now a member of the most envied club on campus, I was one step closer to being with my sister again. Things were finally starting to fall into place.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Maya
June 2023, Greenwich, Connecticut
The day of Naomi’s funeral,dark clouds hover overhead, and the air feels thick as paste. It’s as if my inner state is so strong it’s seeped out of my pores and into the air around us.
It’s been two weeks since her death. Hard to believe, when it feels like just yesterday we’d talked on the phone—argued, really—and the thought sends guilt rushing through me again.
I wish I could redo that conversation. Go back to that moment and take a breath.
When I told Margaret about it, she’d said,I suppose I was too hard on her too.
It wasn’t until she’d said that, the addedtoo,that I realized how difficult it must have been for Naomi, having both of us worrying about her all the time.
I’d get nervous when Naomi would take the subway at night, kiss too many boys, spend money like the world was ending. I wished I could make decisions for her, so that I wouldn’t have to watch her suffer the consequences of her mistakes.
But now I realize that making mistakes is a necessary part of growing up. Instead of complaining, I should have told her how I admired her spontaneity, how little she cared what others thought. How she lit up a room, and how much Dani looked up to her, how much I did.
“Do we get to see Aunt Margaret?” Dani asks sweetly. She calls all my friendsAunt.
“We get to see her, but she might be sad today, okay?” I explain.She seems to know we’re going to a funeral, but I don’t think she fully understands that her aunt Naomi is gone and never coming back, and I don’t have the heart to explain it to her.
The driveway rises through a row of cypress trees before bending around a stone fountain. The sight of Margaret’s house, a French chateau–style home that might have been plucked out of the pages ofArchitectural Digest,makes the grief swell again, and it takes every bit of strength to hold it together.
Don’t cry,I think, as the pressure builds. Naomi couldn’t stand to see me cry. But I’m older than her, ten years older. My funeral should have happened first. Not Naomi’s. Never Naomi’s.
I don’t want to be trapped in a box like Mom. I want someone to scatter my ashes over the ocean…she’d said one afternoon as we walked along the smooth sand shore in East Hampton. It was the summer she turned sixteen, and we’d both spent the week there with Margaret and John.So I can be free.
Nate parks in a space at the end of the driveway and turns to me. “You ready?”
I nod. “Come on, Dani.” After helping her out of the car, I grab ahold of her tiny hand and follow the sea of guests through the house.
